Hello Barbara, you asked for opinions. Here is mine:
After the general contractor (GU) started behaving rudely after a few months, the site manager was seemingly only on site about once a month, and various botched jobs by the subcontractors became visible in the construction process, we engaged a construction lawyer. Initially, certain amounts were withheld from the installment payments until the botched work was corrected, then paid, and during the final settlement, a certain amount was withheld due to ongoing defects and additional expenses on our part. The GU has now sued us. So far, we have spent about 8k on the lawyer. No idea how much more it will cost. Seen this way, 3 - 5k for a legal expenses insurance would have been well invested. However, like everywhere, one probably has to read the fine print extremely carefully to actually get cost coverage in case of need. After all, insurance companies live on taking in more than they pay out. So it needs to be carefully considered. If I had listened to the "gut feeling" of my wife and son regarding the personality of the managing director, we would not have built with this GU. But would the next one have been better? Nowadays, almost all players seem to have too many jobs and therefore cut corners more or less. You can never get 100.00 % perfection, of course, but the tendency for botched work has certainly not decreased due to the pressure on deadlines in construction.
However, if, as often described for example with [Nordlys], you know the contractor, he is from the area, has a good reputation, etc., you can certainly do without it. If not: read the insurance conditions very carefully and take out something like this. 3 - 5k is then not much.